Snake Eyes: Oris Recognizes Chinese New Year with a Tempting ProPilot X Limited Edition
The ProPilot X Year of the Snake Limited Edition offers a subtle take on the serpent.
After wrapping up its year-long 120th anniversary last month, Oris decided to start 2025 with an eye on the coming Chinese New Year and unveiled the 44mm ProPilot X Year of the Snake Limited Edition.
Each year, watch brands explore various interpretations of the designated Chinese zodiac animal – from the extravagant to the understated. And in 2025, the Lunar New Year begins on January 29 and runs through February 8, commemorating the Year of the Snake.
As the sixth in the 12-year cycle of rotating zodiac animals, the snake symbolizes wisdom, wealth, agility, and intelligence. So, let’s take a look at Oris’ subtle yet elegant interpretation of the serpent.
Subtly Serpentine
For this 88-piece limited edition, Oris offers just a hint at the mythical serpent with a golden power reserve hand shaped like a forked tongue and a caseback engraved with the words Year of the Snake.
The Chinese zodiac also has five elements – wood, fire, earth, metal, and water – each assigned numerically based on the last digit of the birth year and symbolized with a different color. This year’s element is wood, represented by the Chinese color cyan, which is a shade of turquoise. The shade is associated with growth, spring, nature, and wood.
In this spirit, the architectural structure of the skeletonized dial is finished in cyan, complementing the brushed titanium case and integrated titanium bracelet, which is secured by the brand’s user-friendly folding Lift clasp.
Skeleton Key
Underneath the double-domed sapphire crystal beats the manual-winding Calibre 115 with an impressive 10-day power reserve indicated by a patented non-linear power reserve display on the right side of the dial at 3 o’clock. The oversize mainspring in the barrel is revealed at 12 o’clock as the source of all that power.
The small seconds display is positioned between 7 and 8 o’clock, with the main dial framed by a chapter ring accented with Super-LumiNova-treated hour indices that light up after dark along with the hands. Meanwhile, the titanium screw-in security crown ensures water resistance to 10 bar (100 meters).
The in-house developed Calibre 115 made its debut with the ProPilot X on the occasion of the Oris’ 115th anniversary in 2019, making a bold statement about the brand’s elevated vision as a movement maker. In fact, the concept of the ProPilot X began as a way of showing off the skeletonized Calibre 115, which was, at the time, an unprecedented movement for the brand.
Pricing & Availability
Available now, the 44mm ProPilot X Year of the Snake Limited Edition is priced at $9,100. For more information, visit the Oris website.